Save Time, Simplify, Scale: Shopify’s Biggest Product Updates in 2018

With the end of the holiday shopping season in sight, many entrepreneurs are looking ahead to 2019, setting goals for themselves and their businesses for the new year.

And while here at Shopify we’re also looking forward to 2019, we wanted to take a moment to recap the year that was.

Our goal this year and every year is to make starting and running a business easier, no matter who you are or where you are in the world. We’re here to help you save time, manage your business more efficiently, simplify complex business processes, and help you scale.

Since many of those things might mirror your goals for 2019, here’s a recap of what we added to Shopify in 2018 to help you grow next year.

Unlock selling superpowers

Getting in front of the right people, with the right message, at the right time is a key part of selling successfully. With Marketing in Shopify, we’re making it easier to do just that. You can now launch, track, and optimize effective Google Smart Shopping campaigns and Facebook carousel ads directly in Shopify—all without having to be familiar with advanced ad settings.

To help you convert interested shoppers to customers, you can now run flexible discounts to suit all of your campaigns in Shopify. Whether you want to offer a percentage-based discount, a BOGO offer, or more, you have the tools to create and measure your discount offers in Shopify.

To make selling even simpler, you can now sell your products directly on one of the most popular social media platforms out there with shopping on Instagram. Enable the Instagram channel in Shopify, and you can tag your products in posts and stories—allowing customers to place their orders without ever leaving Instagram.

Augmented reality is a cutting-edge way to get a step closer to emulating a “real life” product experience. Shopify AR provides all the tools you need to create augmented experiences for your store and help bring your products to life in an entirely new way.

Cut out complicated tasks

No one starts their entrepreneurial journey knowing how to handle every curveball that will come their way. But whenever possible, we want to simplify the complex tasks you’ll face as your business grows. This year, that meant managing multiple locations, streamlining fraud detection, and providing new ways to keep track of your margins.

As your business grows, you may find yourself selling from multiple locations: warehouses, apps, storefronts, basements, you name it. This year, we introduced Locations to help you keep tabs on your inventory no matter where it’s stored or sold—so as you head into your 2019 inventory planning, we’re right there with you.

For merchants who are on Shopify Payments and eligible for Fraud Protect in the United States, you can now automate the process of detecting fraudulent orders. Fraud Protect ensures you’ll no longer have to manually review every order you receive—you can fulfill protected orders immediately without worrying about whether a suspicious order might result in a chargeback.

You can now add a product cost to each of your products in Shopify to quickly track how each product impacts your business’ profitability. With accurate information about your cost of goods sold, you can more easily make important choices for your business—and if you're on the Shopify plan or higher, you can use three new profit margin reports and five new profit finance summaries to better understand your business’ finances.

Save time

Time is your most precious resources as a business owner. To help you make the most of the time you have available, we launched features to help you streamline customer communications, order fulfillment, and app selection.

With Shopify Ping, you can now manage all of your customer conversations and marketing efforts in one place on your phone. Stay engaged with customers by pulling in chats from apps you already use like Messenger and work directly with Kit, your built-in digital marketing assistant, all while you’re on the go. Ping is currently available for iOS.

You can now fulfill orders and print shipping labels from any location using your mobile phone. With Shopify Shipping, you can print packing slips at the same time, so you can streamline shipping and knock fulfillment tasks off of your to-do list no matter where you are. You can also print return labels directly in Shopify from your computer.

We know apps are a key part of your Shopify experience. However, with thousands of apps available to help with everything from shipping to email, finding the right ones was a challenge. That’s why this year, we refreshed the Shopify App Store to help you find the apps you need, faster.

Go global

Entrepreneurship presents enough challenges on its own; language doesn’t need to be one of them. That’s why this year, you can now use Shopify in six languages: French, German, Japanese, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, and Spanish. You can update your language preferences in Shopify and start using Shopify in your chosen language today.

Shopify Payments also expanded internationally this year, and is now available to Shopify merchants in Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Germany and Spain, in addition to existing availability in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, New Zealand and Australia.

Additionally, we’ve made it simpler to sell in your preferred currency—whether or not it’s your local currency. Merchants using Shopify Payments can now price their products in one currency, and receive settlements in their local currency. This feature is available to merchants in all countries where Shopify Payments is available.

And just over a year ago, Shopify Shipping added UPS and DHL Express as carriers to help you grow your business beyond your borders, and offer more choices to your customers at checkout.

In case you missed it

These are just some of the highlights from this past year, but that’s not to say they’re the only things that are available now to help you grow in 2019. For a full look at everything our teams have launched, you can check the Shopify Changelog anytime.

With that, you’re caught up on what’s newly available this year in Shopify. We’re excited to share more new features with you in 2019, and more importantly, to see the businesses you build and grow using them. Cheers to another successful year!

About the author

Desirae Odjick

Desirae is a product marketing manager at Shopify, and has zero chill when it comes to helping entrepreneurs grow their businesses.